


Glorious Dragon

by Gammarad



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28848405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: Initially it's more of a fight, later it's more of a flirt.
Relationships: Shaleän Sevraseched/Shaleän Sevraseched's Wife
Comments: 7
Kudos: 14
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	Glorious Dragon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prinzenhasserin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/gifts).



> Glorious Dragon is, canonically, the name of Shaleän's pirate ship.

Shaleän wasn't captain yet the first time she met Diro. 

As second mate, she boarded the Pencharneise navy ship with her cutlass held high, leading her crew fearlessly over the narrow beam balanced between the gunwales. The dangling ties of her head wrap clung to the back of her neck. The wrap kept the sweat out of her eyes, that was all the good it did her.

This was not the first time Shaleän fought Pencharnese, nor the first time she faced another woman in battle, but it was the first time she faced a woman who was a military officer. She felt a pang of loss at the prospect of ending such a life. She was surprised at herself; the person that life belonged to was busy trying to take hers. 

They battled along the deck, each shifting to the left or right to take out another enemy but focused intently on each other. 

Most men depended on their strength or reflexes, rather than skill, to fight with a sword, and those few whose skill was superior often refused to fight a woman, preferring to use that superior skill to disarm her rather than give her a fair battle. They tried that with Shaleän to their cost. Shaleän had not lost a real sword fight yet — real in battle as opposed to practice bouts, where she had lost many times, nearly as many as she'd won. 

She didn't lose, this time, either, but she also didn't win. They were still fighting, Shaleän noting her opponent beginning to be winded but also feeling a kink in her side from overexertion, when Shaleän heard her captain call the retreat. She noticed, too, that many of her crew were down, she was isolated on the bowsprit with her opponent. 

The proper course of action was to cast off. Shaleän dove for the sea. 

———

The second time, Shaleän was newly-minted captain of her own beautiful ship. She had need of territory, waters to take for her own hunting ground. And what should she do but go on a land-based expedition to a nearby port city to question the locals, find out what routes fat merchant ships would be sailing, where they felt safest, and whether it was because no pirates had been spotted there or because one country or another had military patrols about?

She'd seen no sign of anyone who could tell her the latter, what routes were planned to have heavy protection in the coming months, until she spotted a familiar face. The woman officer from the Pencharneise military, the one she'd fought to a draw aboard a ship her then-captain had failed to take, was sitting at a table, drinking. 

Shaleän laid a trap. She had a new recruit, someone who she felt sure the woman wouldn't know, pass her a message purporting to be from an officer. 

The woman fell for the trap, half anyway. She knew it was a trap but went to see who'd sussed her out as a spy, Shaleän thought. Again Shaleän found her formidable in a physical fight, but she'd expected it this time and brought enough backup that they captured the woman.

Who gave her name, but refused to tell them where the Pencharneise navy would be sailing alongside their merchants as protection. 

Shaleän had felt a strange reluctance to question the officer herself, but her first mate and closest ally Ravet, who'd offered, reported what he had been able to learn, and didn't want to try again. "Something about that one," he said, not looking Shaleän in the eyes. "Captain, she's not going to tell us anything. We ought to kill her or cut her loose."

Shaleän raised her eyebrows, her ears going flat. "No," she said. "We should have handled this personally." She dismissed him, though something at the back of her mind suspected he was right. Not something, however, she intended to listen to.

Entering the room, Shaleän saw the officer slip her hands free of the bracers she wore, dropping them both and the rope that bound them together onto the floor. "I hear thou'rt not cooperative," Shaleän said, exaggerating her Barizheise coastal drawl, her tone amused and a little exasperated.

"You should release us. We have no information to give you." The officer -- Diro Numevin, as she'd named herself -- had kept to formal speech the entire time he questioned her, Ravet had reported. 

Shaleän refused to follow suit. "Thou hast, and I will get it from thee." As Diro had already begun by shedding her bracers, Shaleän moved whip-fast and roughly pulled the officer's jacket down her shoulders, wrenching Diro's arms behind her so that they were tangled in the halfway-off jacket. 

She had caught Diro off-guard with the move. Using the arms caught in the jacket as leverage, she sat Diro in the wooden armchair, then tugged the jacket the rest of the way off and let it drop to the ground behind the chair. Several lengths of rope lay draped over the window sill. Shaleän took one and put it around Diro's waist and the back of the chair, then pulled Diro's wrist back to secure it there.

Diro made a brief sound of pain, quickly stifling it. Her breath came rougher than it had before. Under the jacket, she had on a gray sleeveless shirt that did little to hide the swell of her chest. There was something under that, a loop of dark cloth that showed in the gaps under her arms. 

Shaleän's fingertips rested against the softness of the skin of Diro's inner arm. She looked at the contrast of her own black skin against the Pencharneise woman's gold. Under Shaleän's touch, Diro's pulse beat fast. Shaleän eased her grip, let Diro's shoulder relax, gave it more room to flex. She tied the rope carefully around the golden wrist, securing it firmly to the back of the chair but not so tightly as she had begun to do.

"Your men have shown us more courtesy than we ever expected from pirates. Now we see why." Diro spoke in a soft, even tone, though Shaleän could hear the effort it took.

There was not enough slack left in that rope to tie Diro's other wrist. Shaleän caught Diro's free wrist, pulled it back until she knew the joint must ache. "Don't think I'm soft," she said in low tones, leaning close to put her lips near Diro's ear. 

"It's not that." Diro gasped as Shaleän, picking up a shorter length of rope, began tying her wrists together. "No, they saw us as an officer because you're -- their leader." 

"Ah, thou'rt clever," Shaleän said, pleased. "Could be that was why. So clever, shouldst know to give me what I ask for, before anything so terrible could happen to thee." She circled around the chair, wondering if she needed to secure the officer's legs to the chair as well. 

Diro was uncomfortable, she was afraid, and she was stubborn. Brave. There was something else, though -- underneath the fear and the determination, a sort of longing. Shaleän wondered if Diro envied her, maybe envied the freedom of a pirate captain over the regimented life of a soldier. 

"We are neither so clever nor so craven." Diro's hair, as black as Shaleän's own though much straighter, was worn as all Pencharneise soldiers' hair was worn, long in a strip down the middle of their scalps, short on the sides. The long hair was caught in a band at the back of the neck wound around it several times and tied. 

Shaleän tried to slide the band off, but it held firm. She only managed to tilt Diro's head back. "I see I cannot scare thee." She yanked harder, saw Diro flinch. "Cannot have this off," she muttered, giving up. 

"You should let us go. Your only other option is to murder us, and that would go much worse for you and your men." Diro raised her head gingerly back upright. "We feel sure we were seen leaving in the company of your men, by some who could identify them."

Shaleän laughed. "Dost not fear me, but dost not frighten me either." She moved closer. A whim made her want to look her captive more closely in the eyes, and without giving it any thought she sat herself on Diro's lap, cupped Diro's chin in her hand to turn her face. Their eyes met; their lips, Shaleän thought in an entirely irrelevant tangent, might have met as easily. "All I wish from thee is a bit of wisdom anyone might have had," she said, gripping Diro's chin more tightly, her other hand, resting on Diro's thigh with a mind of its own, two fingers pressing down into the space between her legs. "I don't need names or crew rosters, only a notion where thy navy's ships might be in the months to come. Not worth it to resist me."

"We made oaths," Diro said. She wasn't struggling. 

Shaleän thought of what these oaths might have entailed. "If thou dost not dare return to thy country forsworn, well, art brave and skillful. I could find a place for thee in my crew, dost thou wish it. Couldst work thy way up to captain thy own ship one day, might be." Perhaps she could use that envy she'd sensed.

"We are flattered," Diro said, clearly taken aback. "But no, we are not inclined to a life of robbery and greed-inspired violence." 

Shaleän stood, stung in a way she had not expected by the tone of Diro's rejection. "Then perhaps shalt serve my greed another fashion. I'll have a ransom for thee. Where thinkest thou my demand should be directed?"

"The navy will not pay you for our release. Nor would our father, should you plan to ask that next." Diro clamped her mouth shut. 

Shaleän shrugged. "Then shalt wait here until dost change thy mind." She thought again about tying Diro's legs, but she already looked uncomfortable enough.

Later, Shaleän thought, she had probably known leaving her would allow such a resourceful person the time and ability to escape. She had probably wanted Diro to escape -- after all, it had been what Ravet suggested, and he was usually right about such things.

———

The third time was a different sort of surprise. 

Two of Shaleän's men brought Diro between them. "This one's been asking about you around town," the senior man said, shoving Diro roughly onto the bench nearest the door. 

"Thank you, Mila, Clovis," Shaleän said. Her tone was a clear dismissal. 

"She's a tough one, Captain." Clovis -- the younger of the two, very dark but narrow-faced for a goblin, with piercing gold eyes -- moved his hands emphatically as he spoke. "You sure you don't want us to stay?"

"Are you suggesting we can't handle her alone?" Shaleän asked him. Her voice was deceptively calm, but Mila paled visibly, his half-Pencharneise gold-tinged skin blanching beige. 

"No, Captain." Clovis hurriedly backed out of the door he'd come in. 

Mila chuckled and relaxed, giving Shaleän a nod as he followed Clovis out.

She turned her attention to Diro. "We meet again."

"It's been what, two years? You look well." Diro wasn't bound this time, and she looked calm. 

Shaleän felt inclined to leave her free, to see what it was she'd do. But not, this time, unwatched. "We don't remember," she lied. "We had not expected the pleasure of your company."

"This is not what we had expected, either." Diro sketched a Pencharneise-style bow. "And yet, we are not as angry as we expected to be."

"You were asking about us? Perhaps you expected you'd see us soon."

"We expected only to find a way to get a message to you," Diro said. "But now that you have us, will you wish to question us again?"

"Have you information for us?" Shaleän smiled slowly. "We have no burning questions about the Pencharneise navy, not today. Perhaps this time we will keep you and wait for someone to ransom you. Enjoying your company while we wait."

"Do you think you would enjoy our company, then?" Diro reached a hand out, palm upward.

Shaleän took her hand, turned it over, and brought the knuckles to her lips. "I do think so," she said, and released Diro's hand. 

There was a faint pink glow in Diro's golden cheeks. "No ransom would be paid for me. I know I have told you this before."

"It was not true then, and now I know that," Shaleän countered. 

"Thou art correct. Then, I was still an officer, with two years left to serve. Now, well. I muster out in two days' time, and there will be no one with pockets deep enough willing to pay for me." Diro seemed unaccountably pleased at this piece of poor timing.

Unless it was, instead, strategic timing. "Then it seems I must keep thee," Shaleän said softly. "Dost thou agree?"

"If thou canst," Diro said. "Last time, I escaped quite easily."

Shaleän took a deep breath. "Dost thou regret escaping, last time?"

Diro looked thoughtful. "I do not, but perhaps I should have stayed a night." She moved closer, putting her face close to Shaleän's.

This time, their lips did meet.

**Author's Note:**

> At various times in this story they're both undercover, and also there's definitely a point where they can't (out loud) admit they're on the same side, but it's not exactly in the spirit of the tag — I hope you enjoyed it anyway, since *pirates* and also your request title —


End file.
